NCR Platforms Pacifist Priest’s Humanitarian Nostalgia While Ignoring Supernatural Reality of 9/11
The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) publishes an opinion piece by John Dear, a prominent figure in the post-conciliar peace movement, recounting his service as Red Cross coordinator of chaplains following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Dear narrates anecdotes of ministering to victims’ families and rescue workers at Ground Zero, culminating in a reference to his subsequent organization of protests against the Afghanistan War. The article functions as a retrospective on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks, framing Dear’s humanitarian activity as a Gospel witness. This piece exemplifies the conciliar sect’s reduction of the priesthood to social work and its substitution of Catholic eschatology with secular pacifism.
The Secularization of the Priesthood: Red Cross Functionary Replaces Alter Christus
The cited article presents John Dear not as a priest offering the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary for the repose of souls, but as a bureaucrat managing a “Family Assistance Center” for the Red Cross—a secular, non-confessional humanitarian organization. Dear boasts of coordinating “550 chaplains” and serving “50,000 direct relatives,” yet nowhere does he mention the Missae pro defunctis, the administration of Extreme Unction, or the solemn duty to prepare the dying for particular judgment. The priesthood is sacerdotium, not social work. Pope Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas that Christ’s Kingdom is “primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters,” and that the Church “cannot depend on anyone’s will” in fulfilling her mission “to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness.” Dear’s Red Cross badge has replaced the Roman collar; his coordinator’s clipboard has displaced the Rituale Romanum.
Naturalistic Anthropology: DNA Evidence Supersedes the Soul’s Destiny
The anecdote of “Neil, a Long Island Catholic, who came to Ground Zero clutching a bag of hairs snatched from his missing brother-in-law’s comb as DNA evidence” lays bare the naturalistic worldview permeating the conciliar sect. The supreme concern is biological identification—hairs from a comb—not the state of the departed soul. Where is the Catholic teaching that “it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Macc. 12:46)? Dear “prayed with him before he called his sister,” but the content of that prayer remains undisclosed. Was it the De profundis? The Requiem aeternam? Or a vague, interreligious “moment of silence” acceptable to the Red Cross’s pluralistic guidelines? The omission is the indictment.
False Pacifism: The “Nonviolent Jesus” Idol Versus the King of Kings
Dear’s podcast title—”The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast”—constructs a christological heresy. Christ is not merely “nonviolent”; He is Rex Regum et Dominus Dominantium (Apoc. 19:16), who “shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Ps. 71:8). Pius XI in Quas Primas condemns the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism” which “began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” Dear’s “protests against the Afghanistan War” manifest this denial. The just war doctrine, articulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, recognizes the legitimate use of force to defend the innocent and punish evil. Dear’s pacifism is not Catholic; it is a secular ideology baptized with religious vocabulary. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX) condemns the proposition that “the civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41)—yet Dear inverts this, demanding the Church surrender to secular pacifist diktats.
Interreligious Indifferentism at Ground Zero
The “550 chaplains” coordinated by Dear inevitably included representatives of false religions—rabbis, imams, Protestant ministers—all placed on equal footing under the Red Cross banner. This is the practical application of the conciliar sect’s false ecumenism, condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928) and by the Syllabus (Error 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”). A true Catholic priest at Ground Zero would have established a station for the Traditional Latin Mass, heard confessions until voice failed, and anointed the dying sub conditione. Instead, Dear managed a multi-faith triage unit. The “fireman who came scrambling down the smoking seven-story pile” begging “Father, quick, give me your blessing” received what? A lay blessing? A generic invocation? The article’s silence on the sacramental order is deafening.
The “Teach Me How to Pray” Indictment of Conciliar Catechesis
The rescue worker’s plea—”Father, please, teach me how to pray. We found the body of my friend yesterday, and I don’t know what to do”—exposes the catastrophic failure of fifty years of post-conciliar formation. A Catholic firefighter in 2001, formed by the “renewed” liturgy and catechesis, does not know the Rosary, the Salve Regina, the Memorare, or the prayers for the dead. This is the fruit of the “hermeneutic of rupture” masquerading as renewal. St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu condemned the Modernist proposition that “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Prop. 63). The conciliar sect has not defended evangelical ethics; it has dismantled them, leaving rescue workers spiritually destitute amid the rubble.
Twenty-Five Years of Apostasy: From Ground Zero to Synodal Chaos
Dear’s reflection on “where we are 25 years later” inadvertently traces the trajectory of the conciliar revolution. The same spirit that reduced 9/11 ministry to Red Cross coordination now drives the “synodal church” toward the abomination of desolation. The “Nonviolent Jesus” idol has birthed the “God of surprises” who allegedly blesses same-sex unions (Fiducia Supplicans), the “pope” who worships Pachamama, the “cardinals” who deny the indissolubility of marriage. The thread is unbroken: the rejection of Christ’s social kingship (Pius XI, Quas Primas) leads inevitably to the enthronement of man in the sanctuary. As Pius IX warned in the Syllabus (Error 80), the Roman Pontiff cannot “reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”—yet the conciliar sect has done precisely that, and Dear is its faithful chronicler.
Conclusion: A Priesthood Without Sacrifice Is a Lie
The article is a monument to the “Church of the New Advent’s” spiritual bankruptcy. It offers humanitarian sentiment in place of supernatural charity, secular coordination in place of priestly mediation, pacifist protest in place of the Social Reign of Christ the King. John Dear’s twenty-five-year retrospective is not an examination of conscience; it is a self-congratulatory narrative of a man who has lost the sacerdotium and found a platform. The true Catholic response to 9/11 was not a Red Cross coordination role, but the Missae pro defunctis offered by the thousands, the Rosaries prayed in the smoke, the Confessions heard in the ruins, the certainty that “Christ shall reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). The conciliar sect has no enemies but those who defend the Faith entire.
Source:
Podcast: John Dear's time as a Red Cross chaplain after 9/11 (ncronline.org)
Date: 10.09.2026